Her Counterpart
by Kyootulu
Summary: Alistair doubles back to the doomed village of Lothering, and nearly gets killed over something deemed inconsequential. While convalescing from his injuries, he relays his reasons to his commander. Takes place before "A Small Price to Pay."


_Author's Note: This is my spin on a famous scene in the game. This is also a gift story to someone I know._

* * *

**Her Counterpart**

He was bleeding profusely.

The fading sun's reflection rippled over the crimson pool blossoming underneath him, staining the grass and changing its verdant color entirely. It presented a macabre version of the sunset unfurled over the heads of those present like a multi-colored banner, its vermilion and indigo splashes heralding the onset of nightfall over the battlefield in which he lay. His dark eyes fluttered, the struggle to remain conscious apparent, and one which he was clearly losing. His shield was gone, out of his reach, angled against the ground and propped halfway by coarse, life-soaked earth. To his credit, he had not lost his grip on his sword, though the strength he used to keep it within his palm was ebbing quickly.

This was hardly the first time Elissa had come across a dying man, but it was the first time in which he was one of her own. Fear, in all of its icy wont, braided down her spine and lit up her battle-frenzied senses with its bitter sensation, needles and pinpricks spearing through her lungs and robbing her of breath. She crumpled on her knees next to him like dead weight, dark eyes lifting to survey the carnage surrounding them... body parts, corpses, limbs that have lost their owners amidst the dying outskirts of the small hamlet that her party just left. She could practically see the land degenerate before her, as if anticipating the next wave of Darkspawn that would inevitably come and fully take it, dragging with them a blanket of famine, pestilence, and death. Deep down within herself, in every recess of her tactician's mind, she knew Lothering would be lost by the time twilight descended.

"Alistair, look at me," she whispered, her grimy, scarlet-stained fingers reaching down to cup his face and force his eyes in the direction of her own. "We have to move you, but you need to hang on. We can save you. We _can_, but not without your help."

His lashes flickered, irises nearly obsidian beyond the fog that impeded his vision. She swallowed at the lack of a quip, the space in which a smart comment or whipcrack retort should be remained woefully empty.

She wanted to shake him.

"Damn it, what sort of crazy spirit possessed you to come back here?" she asked through clenched teeth, feeling the unwanted and telltale burn behind her eyelids. Sinew tightened over her wrists, straining to hold his considerably heavier weight upwards. "We could've escaped this...we were almost past...why did you double back...? What were you looking for?"

For once, it was she who filled the silence with words, some significant, others nonsensical, said for the purposes of speaking and little else. Something, anything, to give his consciousness an anchor lest it slip away utterly and shunt his soul through the Fade. When Morrigan's shadow collapsed near her own, she moved to the side, forcing herself to let go of the man, and cling onto hope instead.

The journey to a location safe enough to set up camp felt like an eternity, threaded with forever. Their progress didn't seem fast enough to fully see to the would-be templar's wounds, but upon arrival, she wasted no time. Elissa ransacked Alistair's pack for his tent, pitched it while Morrigan took full advantage of her mother's herbs and her supernatural talents. It was something to do, a momentary purpose, managing to find some way to be useful and stay out of the apostate's way.

Moving him once he was stabilized was a struggle in itself. His weighty musculature made it difficult for even two women to shift him carefully from a prone position on the ground, to another within the confines of his tent. His body was deceptively heavy, and once he was secured within the canvas dome, Elissa left it to take up the first watch. All she saw from where she stood were silhouettes, cast against durable fabric by the light of the lantern within. Morrigan's shadow puppet loomed over Alistair's unmoving one, and the sight of it coaxed liquid steel to harden within her jaw, straining against the soft pulse of her heartbeat on the side of her neck.

She could outwit anything, maneuver around the most dangerous situations with her strategic acuity, but in this she was worthless. Useless. With all of her Maker- given talents, He had yet to give her one which enabled her to keep a heart beating. Normally, she wouldn't care. Lost causes were rightfully and practically abandoned to preserve what could be saved. This was different, somehow. For the life of her, she didn't know why.

_Liar_.

The flap shifted behind her, Morrigan's catlike stride moving her out of the tent. A rag was clutched in her fingers, the mage busying herself in wiping off traces of magic and salve from her knuckles. "He may be a simpleton, but he's certainly a hardy one," she observed, falling a step next to Elissa.

"He'll live, then." Relief, pooling somewhere within her, was potently visceral. She exhaled slowly, the night's chill rendering her breath visible and translucent. "How many days does he need?"

"A few, but we certainly don't have time for that, do we?" the Witch replied, lifting a midnight brow.

"No, we don't." Elissa dropped her hands to her hips, scuffing the dirt underneath her right boot. "We'll have to keep moving. Slowly, but we can seek out the services of a professional healer in the next village. There's only three of us, we need to make him whole as quickly as we possibly can."

"Agreed." Amber eyes slid on the tilted corners, Morrigan's lips lifting faintly in a smirk. "As pitiful as that is. If I had it my way, I would have left him, but as Mother says... we can't have _all_ of your brethren dying at once."

"The sentiment's appreciated," Elissa retorted dryly. Her gaze flicked to the tent. "Is he sleeping?"

"Like the baby that he is. His bandages need changing, however."

"I'll take care of it. Get some rest."

She entered the tent once Morrigan was gone, folding herself in a seated position next to Alistair's sleeping form. Drawing a wooden bowl and bandages towards her, her spare set of fingers moved in tandem to push the blanket covering most of her fellow Grey Warden down. It was as gentle as she could make it, her movements gradual, careful as she unwound sterile cloth which was now spattered with rust-colored stains. Her palm smoothed over the planes of his chest in the process, knuckles sliding over the sculpted expanse of his torso and the defined ridges of his abdomen. Underneath fabric and armor, he was all coppery skin and tightly-corded muscle, stitched solidly over the bones and tendons which made up the internal framework of a man who spent his days embroiled in some manner of vigorous, physical activity.

She slowly released a breath she didn't know she was holding, appreciative of the aesthetics that only a stubborn sort of athleticism could provide... but with it came the sight of horrific gouges and lacerations of flesh that were still being knit over by magic. She did not know, and had not expected, that there were so many.

Elissa shook her head, and dutifully applied the salve Morrigan provided. It was only when she was changing the last bandage that Alistair started to stir, oblivious to his hazy return to awareness until he spoke.

"You weren't trying to molest me in my sleep, were you?"

"Yes, I was." Her reply was automatic, dark eyes lifting to fall upon his. "But this is a nightmare. If you do it right, you'll wake up before something _really_ frightening happens."

"Really? Excellent! Does this mean you're putting on a really girly apron and baking me cookies?"

His reply didn't make a whit of sense. She furrowed her brows at him. "....cookies?"

"I'm starving," her fellow Warden confessed.

She stopped at that. Elissa peered closely at his face, focusing on the state of his expression. Realization dawned on her instantly.

"...you're high."

His grin was blinding, rows of teeth flashing from between parted lips. "I am!" Alistair exclaimed, his leaden cranium rolling backwards as he stared up at the canvas above him. "I am and it's _glorious_!"

"Oh, Maker's breath," Elissa groaned. "What did Morrigan _give_ you?!"

"I don't know, but I call dibs."

"Ugh. I should've paid more attention to Nan when she'd rant about various species of vegetation," the redhead sighed. "It must have been something for the pain." She reached out, drawing the blanket up higher over him. "Well, I suppose I ought to take this as a good sign that you're well on the mend."

"Signs," Alistair repeated, his grin only broadening at the word. "I like signs. They keep you from getting lost and....stuff. There was this one time in Redcliffe where I was asked by Bann Teagan to-- "

"I wish you read the ones that said 'Exit Lothering Here'," Elissa interjected exasperatedly. "What were you thinking just dashing off like that?"

"Bwah? Dashing off to what?"

"Lothering!"

"What about Lothering?"

The urge to throw up her hands was overwhelming. _I should just wait until he's a little more lucid_, she groused internally.

"We were leaving Lothering," Elissa explained patiently. "To try and avoid the Darkspawn that were spotted moving towards the town. But then you just yelled... something, and then backtracked and ran all the way back. That's when we got attacked. Did you forget something?"

"Forget-- "

The word seemed to snap Alistair out of his temporarily addled senses, eyes growing wide as he looked around him. He jerked upwards from his bedroll, quick and sudden enough that the empty wooden bowl near him toppled and overturned, a roll of bandage or two trailing pristine, white lines on the ground before rolling to a stop. Before Elissa could warn him, the young man cried out at the jagged pain lancing at his side, instant and instinctive. His pride was his only deterrent from more, his teeth clamping down in an effort not to swear as his arms twined over his torso, shoulders hunching forward.

She moved without thinking, one arm hooking across his front while the other rested on one of his shoulderblades. "Easy," she murmured. "Morrigan just managed to put you together, you know. No sudden movements for a while."

Tension wound tightly about him, a spring ready to snap at a moment's notice. As the sharp edges of pain faded into a dull throb, Alistair relaxed slowly. His heavy head lolled forward, forehead pressing against the inward curve of her shoulder as the carved arches of his own sagged. He took his time to breathe, deep inhalations that dragged air over her skin, cool upon entry, and suffused with warmth when it left his lungs and dewed on the hollow of her collarbones. Goosebumps mottled up the slope, rising at the unexpected sensation.

Silence thrummed with the sudden, electric feel of the air inside the tent.

When Alistair spoke again, his voice was muffled, and somewhat sheepish. "You'll think it's stupid," he muttered, his breath tickling the sleeve of her tunic.

Elissa sighed at that. "Well, you'll never know unless you tell me," she pointed out.

"I..." She heard him swallow. "...had to save it. I couldn't just leave it. I saw it when we were leaving, but when I realized the Darkspawn would probably get there by nightfall... I had to go back. They'd just destroy it."

"Destroy what?"

He pulled his head away, and nodded to the pile Morrigan had arranged on the side. Dirtied clothing and dented armor caught her eye.

Elissa pushed forward, propping Alistair up on the pillows behind him. After crawling further into the tent, she picked through the detritus of the day's battle, fingernails catching over the scratches and other visible signs of impact where metal crashed against metal. Her digits lingered over the slashes, the holes punctured through armor from spears that found her fellow Warden's body instead. She ignored the feel of curdling bile at the pit of her stomach in favor of searching for what Alistair had been referencing. She found it soon enough, drawing it out from underneath a torn shirt that was carelessly discarded by his reluctant healer, but miraculously, it was still intact.

The rose drooped slightly in her hands, its head bowed as if to reflect its savior's awkwardness from somewhere behind her. A single petal had been torn, the blossom on the verge of losing one or two more from the bottom. Its scent was unmarred, light and floral, reaching her in defiance of the overwhelming strains of rust and herbs around her. In all of its apparent fragility, etched plainly in the softness of ruby velvet, Elissa was almost afraid to touch it, reluctant to disturb it with clumsy finger-ends.

When she shifted back towards Alistair, she handed it to him wordlessly. Her companion closed his fingers over the stem to accept it, ignoring the pricking points of the tiny, inconsequential thorns that riddled the viridian length. He toyed with it carefully, his gaze locked on the delicate object in his grasp.

"When I saw it, I thought..." He cleared his throat. "That it wasn't just our job to stop the Blight.... save the lives we could reach in time. It's odd, don't you think? That such a small thing could remind someone that there are things, now, that are worth preserving no matter how close they are to destruction. Worth protecting, liberating from that eventuality even though the effort is inevitably fruitless." He gestured loosely to the side, though his eyes refrained from gravitating back to her direction. "Granted I probably killed it, plucking it the way I did....but when I recognized that something so beautiful can still bloom, still exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness..."

His lips quirked upwards, the faintest of errant smiles tugging on the corners. "You have no idea how relieving it is to realize that a man can still hope, these days," he finished.

Elissa watched him silently, letting the pause in between stretch on while her eyes traced his profile, dropping upon the blossom he held. This wasn't the first time hearing him speak derailed her, forced her to marvel on their differences. With her deference to subterfuge and practicality, and his own reverence to honesty and the wholesome good, they were bound to clash over command decisions, squabble over what's right versus what was necessary. His reasons, whenever he deigned to make them known, have never failed to surprise her, ceaseless in their ability to convince her to take a step back and look at something past her more ruthless instincts.

"You could've been killed, Alistair," she said quietly. After his words, however, she was astonished to find herself deprived of the will to shake some sense into him.

"I know." Alistair leaned back, his head tilting towards her and his grin returning. "But it would be such a damned waste, wouldn't it? Besides, if I did just leave it, it would never meet its counterpart."

"Counterpart?"

His free hand extended forward, grasping her own and pulling it towards him. He curled her fingers over the stem, his other hand folding over her own as he did. His meaning, the moment he finished moving, was crystal clear.

Their gazes met, the following lull suddenly filling with both nothing and everything.

Elissa dared to speak first. "So I'm..."

"Well, you _are _a redhead."

"That's true."

"And when you don't like something, you can be rather prickly."

"Hey."

Alistair chuckled, groaning at the effort. Elissa rolled her eyes at him playfully, but not without a smile in turn, her free hand moving to drag the dislodged blanket over him once more.

"I meant to give it to you, anyway," he remarked, his tone gentling. "I just...I didn't know when I'd be able to, until circumstances decided it for me, as usual. In many ways, I think the same thing when I look at you." He paused, chewing on his bottom lip. "You manage to always give the mad impression that whenever you're involved, we have a chance at winning this. It isn't just that you're a rare and wonderful thing to find amidst all this... craziness. It's also that... when you're around... I dare myself to hope. You might not have been a Grey Warden long, you might not have experienced the good things about it, but...in my terribly inelegant way...I wanted you to know that. You give me hope, Elissa."

Her expression softened at that, while his hands slowly released her own. She adjusted her hold on the stem, pulling it to her and tracing a single fingertip over the edges of the rose's outer petals.

"The odds would be better if you were there to back me up," she said. "For winning."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

Elissa hesitated, but only for a moment. She moved closer, her knees making eradicable impressions on the soft earth beneath her weight. Her arms lifted, to enclose carefully over his shoulders, the rose dangling from her hand. His own uncertainty was more felt than seen, gradually melting away when his own limbs moved to reciprocate the embrace. Her fingers curled inward, her chin tucked against the hard line where his neck joined his shoulder. Her nose detected the salt on his skin, partaking deeply from it.

"Don't..." The knot in her throat was unexpected. She forced it down before continuing. "...don't scare us like that again."

His arms around her tightened at her words, hearing the choked inflection and unmindful of his injuries in favor of it.

"I won't."

She knew enough about him to know full well that Alistair's oath was his bond, that he would fulfill his promises no matter how far they took him. Despite her apprehensions, and all intentions to the contrary, she closed her eyes and sank into him.

**FIN**


End file.
